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Galak-Z (PS4) gameplay video and interview

I've seriously been wanting a game like this since I was a kid. Looks so good.
 
This, along with Transistor, stood out the most to me during Sonys indie bit. Can't wait to try it, it looks like the kind of game ill end up shunning all the retail launch games for like Hexic and Geo Wars this gen.
 
Yeah that sounds kind of neat, I will certainly look into a shmup for PS4 during the post launch drought and I will try to keep this in -

DecoyOctopus said:
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NEVERMIND, SOLD!
 
Man my general next-gen hype is definitely above normal levels. I click on any thread that's name contains Ps4 or X1, faster than light. This game is on my most wanted indie games list.
 
1. name drop Macross as inspiration
2. Itano Circus
3. have "Dimensional" in the title

If you guys have a homage to the VF-1 as a unlockable fighter I will be in heaven. Day 1 sale here on PS4.
 
bigboss370 said:
PS4 has too many games! o_o
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Now they just have to release. :\

Every single indie title I've seen confirmed for the PS4 impresses the hell outta me. Galak-Z's short preview at E3 had me intrigued, though SHMUPS are no longer games I really go for, but this new vid has me sold. Cannot wait.
 
I'd like to see this game in motion at 1080p.
The background scenery looks to be quite detailed. There is a lot of visual depth which the lighting effects really highlight.
 
Everything about this game looks fantastic and I can't wait to play this, but I think i'm going be terrible at it.
 
I've had my eye on this one since E3 and it's looking really really nice.

This is the kind of Indie stuff that I want, it seems to have decent production values and solid art, looks really fun!
 
Drifting and boosting looks like so much fun, doing a 180 and locking on missiles while boosting backwards... I NEED THIS!

Wave Race inspirations are always a good thing, I like this guy :)
 
Now that I'm home and got to watch the entire thing with audio, this game looks and sounds like it's gonna be fantastic.
 
S¡mon;75042003 said:
For PlayStation 4 that is still unknown, because there isn't an actual signed deal yet.
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I find that kind of shocking seeing as how they were trotted out at E3 during Sony's event as being welcomed into the Playstation family. Granted I don't work in the industry and am ignorant of the process, but I would've thought you'd have some sort of deal signed before a company would showcase you as one of the reasons their upcoming platform kicks ass.
 
Fushichou187 said:
I find that kind of shocking seeing as how they were trotted out at E3 during Sony's event as being welcomed into the Playstation family. Granted I don't work in the industry and am ignorant of the process, but I would've thought you'd have some sort of deal signed before a company would showcase you as one of the reasons their upcoming platform kicks ass.
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If they can self publish and there isn't any kind of exclusivity agreement it doesn't make much difference.
 
Wow, this is my first real look at the game and I'm totally in love.

His inspirations and homages with the explosions, art, backgrounds.. picture perfect. Gameplay looks really tight.

MUST play this asap.
 
RoboPlato said:
If they can self publish and there isn't any kind of exclusivity agreement it doesn't make much difference.
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That's a good point. I guess it was more the fact that Sony was all "Look who's apart of our fambam nao!!1" though a deal had yet to be reached. At some point I guess it's all smoke and mirrors anyway until the game actually launches, I'm just surprised that's all. Still looking forward to this and all launch window PS4 indie games that have been shown.
 
I loved the sneak peak we saw at the E3 conference and I'm now even more stoked having just watched both pieces of GI content.

This game is right up my alley!
 
I keep forgetting all the amazing Indie games that are launching with the PS4, this looks great cant wait to pick it up.
 
This guy (Jake) is a helluva talker. Anyone else notice that? I listened to all 7 mins, he had me mesmerized lmao. Dude's a great salesmen and probably a great story-teller. I wish I could talk as descriptive and smooth as that. Game looks good, too!
 
I would effing love for this game to have online co-op. And maybe splitscreen?
 
Game looks great. I love love LOVE the motion and mobility of the fighter. It's like Battlestar Galactica's viper combat taken to the extreme.
 
Jake Kazdal makes games that get right inside a genre, and then expand that genre's boundaries in unexpected ways. Skulls of the Shogun offered tactical battling that was as sharply honed as the glinting blade of its hero's katana, but it sped things up too, introducing players to a turn-based game that moved at the pace of an arcade classic. With Galak-Z, it's arcade classics themselves that get a reinvention. Kazdal's new space shooter has been created to evoke the kind of coin-op thrills he experienced playing at the greasy cabinets in his dad's pizza parlour when he was a kid, but he also wants to work on a larger scale. Asteroids and Centipede both get a name-checking - but so do Fallout 3, Rogue Legacy, Metroid, and GTA. Space-based dog-fighting in a procedural, flattened-out cosmos. Is this the first open-universe game?

It certainly felt like that during the brief glimpse we all got of Galak-Z during Sony's E3 press conference. Forget pricing and DRM strategies: for me, it's the indies that have really made the PlayStation 4 exciting. In amongst the assault rifles and the racing lines, the smaller teams had a great opportunity to surprise everyone this June. They did, too, unleashing colour, character, and genuine vibrancy. Unleashing space-based dog-fighting in a procedural, flattened-out cosmos.

It's not hard to see why Sony was so eager to get Galak-Z on stage. "I've always wanted to do this game," says Kazdal, when we chat over Skype. (The designer's chosen to use the oft-neglected Skype video option, too, so behind him I can see his team - now eight strong, apparently - working at clusters of computers in their art- and robot-strewn office.) "I hate to admit this but I'm not much of a 3D action gamer. There's too much ambiguity. There's too much unclarity: you're judging distances, fighting the camera, and you're never able to achieve that one-to-one connection. When I grew up and I was at the pizza parlour, I was playing all those hardcore arcade classic action games, I wanted to revisit those games today. Literally.Super tight, perfect controls, minimal input, one-to-one. I miss that twitch gaming."
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A year into development, Galak-Z's story stuff is about to come online. What's already in place, though, is the control scheme - and it's not quite the control scheme you might be expecting. "It's such an organic input," Kazdal says, fingers twitching over an invisible pad as he talks. "When people saw it at E3, almost everyone assumed it was a twin-stick shooter, and it's not. It's more like Asteroids but with way more control. In Asteroids you had a thrust. Here you've got a thrust, a boost, you've got a backwards thrust and you can also do a side-strafe. And you can jump out of the plane for a moment and roll over enemies, missiles, in-coming fire. You've got those thrusters to learn, but it really clicks with the Halo-level AI. People are on patrol and you're flying backwards and forwards, jumping over volleys of lasers. Tight."
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"I think GTA 3 is one of the greatest games of all time. Just the scramble of getting into trouble and all of a sudden there are one too many guys to handle so you're running, smashing into stuff. You understand the physics of the world, so you're very quickly able to have a plan, see the plan go to s***, freak out, and then figure something new out right there and then. It's the simple one-to-one relationship with the game that allows you to create these seat-of-your-pants moments. That simple panic, that sense of being good enough to be able to continue to exist gives me a real high, and I've put a lot of that in Galak-Z."

Is this where the game's more open-world structure comes from? "Yeah, kinda," says Kazdal, who's already lining up his next reference. "I actually really loved Halo: ODST. There would be these scripted missions where you went forward in a hallway and fought a bunch of guys. But there'd also be these roving bands of enemies and you'd just sneak around, too. You had these overarching goals - I need to go that way, to get to that spot - but there were patrols, and you could backtrack if you needed to get away. That ties into the GTA vibe: this huge space where you're running around trying to lose guys and do whatever it takes to find your own way in - stealthy or guns blazing.

"And remember we're dealing with space." Kazdal leans back in his chair and spreads his fingers wide. "You want it to be this big, infinite-feeling thing and there's no need to corral people in. So what Galak-Z does is it combines both thought processes. We have these dedicated missions which are in huge dungeon-like caves, and they're a bit more Super Metroid-y - another huge inspiration - as you explore, find cool new stuff. Outside of that, we have huge procedurally-generated swathes of space with asteroid fields, space pirates, and wrecks of old ships. You've got missions and things you can do that are finite, or you can just junk all that for a few hours and head off and stuff comes to you. There are imperials looking for you, there are space pirates, a faction of classic space bugs, and these guys don't necessarily get along with each other. You might come across this organic chaos where people are already fighting. You can even choose whether to engage or not in some cases."
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For all Kazdal's references, for all his name-checking and his forensic citing of specific influences, as I watch a video of him playing an early build for me while we chat over the top of the action, it strikes me that Galak-Z doesn't really feel like anything else. Warm synth gathers momentum as Kazdal vacuums in pick-ups, blasts space debris back and forth and unearths nests of aliens. Their ships judder towards him, thrumming and twitching like electric lawnmowers, while their teenage pilots babble threats over the comms. Using those thrusters just so Kazdal can dance between laser fire - tumbling and spinning, but still in control of it all, able to adjust pitch and balance with precision.

The enemies, meanwhile, are worryingly happy to break from their Galaxian patterns and think for themselves. There are no health bars to clutter the view, but you can get a sense of how much damage Kazdal's inflicting by the sparks and lightning their hulls give off as they start to malfunction.
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Even from this distance I can see it's all about that thrust - a system that requires mastery and an understanding of the physics of the world that just wouldn't be required in a twin-stick. The older Asteroids approach actually requires more thought here, more dexterity, just as reducing the dog-fighting to a fixed plane allows players to better focus on crucial elements like positioning and trajectories, rather than on flinging a 3D camera about as they scan the heavens for the single dot that's shooting at them from somewhere.

"I hate to ooze about how awesome this game is, but I just really love it," grins Kazdal. "It's one of those games that puts me in the zone. When you get good at it, stuff's coming at you like crazy, but you're just in this zen state. You get in that weird trance where you're thinking three turns ahead and predicting what's going to happen with real accuracy. If you're going to spend all your time making just one game - which means spending all your time playing just one game - you'd better make it rad."
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-30-galak-z-dog-fighting-goes-open-universe-on-ps4
 
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